The Best Years of Our Lives (1946): Eitan's Take

The Best Years of Our Lives blows the lid off of "The Greatest Generation" in two profound and contradictory ways: first, it shows us that the generation -- long known to be obsessed with its own stature and role in history -- was filled with mundane and shortsighted little folks just like you and me, lost in the world, dealing with typical challenges like finding jobs, falling in love with the right and wrong people, and approaching the future with both caution and excitement. And, secondly, it shows us that these people were not like my generation at all; tortured by the global inhumanity of war, they focused inwards, too caught up in their own selfish interests to engage with the world in a progressive or intellectual way. The film, following intertwining lives of three men -- one from the Air Force, one from the Navy, and one from the Army -- in the months after their return from the not-so-front-lines of WWII is an ambitious project, in that it tries to capture the entire essence of a certain place and time (the foreplay leading up to the reproductive madness of the Baby Boom), but it's crippled by how dated its ideas, characterizations, and central issues have become.

Of course, there are wars in every generation, and I understand the plethora of great Vietnam films more than I understand The Best Years of Our Lives because our country is still fighting demons dating back to that war (see: 2004 Election), and we still see its aftershocks in film, art, literature, politics, and war. I went into this film with a great load of hype surrounding it, and on an artistic level, I was truly not disappointed -- the performance of Harold Russell as amputee Homer Parrish is particularly great, with its dark subtlety and deep pathos, the cinematography and writing is uniformly excellent, and scenes like the assault in the ice cream shop and Al's drunken speech to his banking partners were laden with both curiosity and frustration about the new role of Americans in the global community -- but I felt oddly unmoved by the whole exercise, as though all of these events were just too far back for me to even grasp, let alone appreciate. It's great art, no doubt, and as an icon of its generation (it is to the 40's what The Graduate and Easy Rider are to the 60's, Coming Home and Nashville are the the 70's, American Beauty is to the 90's) it is a towering representative of all that the Academy must have wanted to reward in the crucial rebuilding years following WWII. Because I admire its rich characterization and powerful exploration of the psyches of new and unwilling veterans, I feel compelled to like it. Nevertheless, I have to admit that it just didn't click with me the way I expected it to. I will leave this film to a bygone generation and award it a respectable 7/10.

The Best Years of Our Lives (1946): Shira's Take

Another William Wyler WWII movie. Unlike Mrs. Miniver, though, Best Years followed the intertwining stories of three men who fought in the war (one by sea, one by land, and one by air) coming home to their very different lives. Homer Parrish (played by Howard Russell, who truly was a double-amputee and who Wyler recruited after seeing him in an army training film) has lost his hands, and with them, he assumes, any possibility at a normal life. Frederic March won an Oscar for best actor as Al Stephenson, and my only complaint about that fact is that he was such an underdeveloped character. Aside from telling the viewer he is a drunk and doesn't want his daughter to be a homewrecker, the film really doesn't allow us inside Al's head. The only really great Al-related scene was one in which he is being honored at work (a bank) for being a veteran soon after being criticized for having given a loan to a man with no collateral. He has (according to a tally taken by his wife, Milly, played by Myrna Loy) five drinks under his belt when he gives a speech, saying that a Major during the war told his platoon to take a hill, and Al said in response that the risk is too sufficient to take without the proper collateral. "So we didn't take the hill and we lost the war." Seeing the change in Milly from disappointment at his public drunkenness to pride at his strong morals is really great.

Now we acknowledge the most prevalent, and, in many ways, most annoying plot within the movie. Teresa Wright (also in Mrs. Miniver and still very cute with a smart-beyond-her-years charm) plays Al's daughter, Peggy. She falls in love with the third man coming home from the war, the married Fred Derry. Fortunately, he's married to satan in blonde hair, so we get to see their marriage unravel and Fred and Peggy end up together. But the real problem is, though in the war Fred truly earned everything adorning his air force jacket, he comes home and is still just a soda jerk or construction worker at best. I don't mind, of course, that the nice girl with the rich father marries the guy who got fired from his job at the local pharmacy. I do mind that their interest in each other seems completely fabricated and lame. Still, this was an all-around good movie. Very entertaining throughout, with good acting all around. 8/10

The Great Ziegfeld (1936): Shira's Take

Soon before we started the movie (which feels like years ago, because the movie was over 3 hours long), I said to Eitan, "I hope this movie is all that Broadway Melody wished it was." My hopes, good friends, were beyond met. Through its three hours, there were maybe five minutes that dragged. It was constant entertainment, either with great dramatic plot, silly comedic bits, or amazing musical revue numbers, all of which were completely visually stunning. From the very start, The Great Ziegfeld was entirely enjoyable. I loved the friendly rivalry between Flo Ziegfeld (William Powell) and Billings (Frank Morgan). It was sort of reminiscent of the dogs with the hats in Go, Dog. Go! (every time Billings was interested in a woman, Ziegfeld would charm her into working for him instead). Anna Held (Luise Rainer, Ziegfeld's wife #1) was a classic drama-queenish French girl in the style of Greta Garbo. Billie Burke (Myrna Loy, Ziegfeld's wife #2) touchingly gave up the diamonds Flo bought her so that he could afford to finance four new shows. One slightly cheesy bit was when Ziegfeld said he invested all his money in the stock market. His valet said something along the lines of, "The market's been a bit unstable lately," which was of course followed by a phone call to Ziegfeld letting him know the stock market crashed and he lost all his money. Still, really great movie. Notes to myself: 20 gallons of milk song! Sandow the strongest man's muscle jiggles will live in my mind forever. 8/10

The Great Ziegfeld (1936): Eitan's Take

I'm not sure how much of The Great Ziegfeld is true, but I'm sure much of it is; regardless, it is entirely accurate to call Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr. a truly Great man. I was seriously not looking forward to diving into this 3 hour epic mess of a biopic, but I leave it thoroughly impressed by the care and sophistication with which director Robert Z. Leonard examined the life of one of America's greatest showmen. Unlike The Aviator and Citizen Kane, which are truly meditations on fame, fortune, success, ego, and the American Dream, The Great Ziegfeld never really rises above the level of outsider examination, but slowly and patiently we really begin to understand the man -- "Ziggy" to some, "Flo" to others, and all in all one of the most ambitious guys to ever slap his name on a Broadway revue.

From his early days pimping out a by-today's-standards-not-too-muscular but-perfectly-beefy-for-1893 Sandow ("The World's Strongest Man") to his final moments -- broke, withered, alone, and pathetically but not tragically plotting out his next big hit -- we are given a huge window through which we see Ziegfeld in his glory and his misfortune. Adoring of many women and adored back by some of them, Ziegfeld, portrayed with great vigor and charm by William Powell, is an interesting figure, because his success in both romance and show business depended much less on his actual talent than it did on his simple charm and his almost superhuman ability to manipulate, cajole, charm, and buy his way into excellence. Which is not to say that he was a horrible person. His loyalty to his friends, his love for his wives, and his utter stamina shine through his weaker moments.

As a film, the 3 hour production is simply phenomenal. Although it drags a bit in the third act, I was absolutely hooked for the entire film. I was thinking that the brilliant, lavish, and probably expensive as all hell setpieces and recreations of the trademark spiral staircases and multilayered sets were Busby Berkeley-esque, but then I realized that there would be no Busby Berkeley without Florenz Ziegfeld. This man pretty much invented stage spectacle, and the constant onslaught of eye candy was breathtaking at times. At several points in the movie, Shira and I both had our mouths completely agape.

The film is definitely intelligent, exciting, emotionally powerful, and visually eye-popping. I dreaded watching it, and now I realize that this is probably one of the great underrated and little-watched gems of the 1930's. I give it a 7/10.

P.S. TWENTY GALLONS OF MIIIILKKKK
P.P.S. How could you NOT flip out while watching this: